


Dirt

by Astern



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: Apocalypse, Brothers, Estrangement, Gen, Horror, Survival, Survival Horror, Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-29
Updated: 2017-07-08
Packaged: 2018-11-20 21:24:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11343444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Astern/pseuds/Astern
Summary: In the years following the outbreak of the cordyceps epidemic, Joel and Tommy's struggle for survival triggers the slow deterioration of their relationship. Follow them through the years as they flee their hometown, drift through quarantine zones, learn brutality and survival on the open road, and eventually find themselves in a city called Boston.





	1. The Triage

_October 1, 2013 – 8:01am_

The screeching static of the radio felt oddly calming.  It was something that Tommy had never been able to stand before.  He’d have been scrolling through channels by now, looking for something clearer, something with less talking and more music.  But now, the squelching voice of the announcer felt like a ragged reminder that the world had not yet ended.  Not yet.

_The number of confirmed deaths has passed two hundred.  The Governor has called a state of emergency and mobilized the National Guard to evacuate stranded residents and secure areas overrun by the sick._

There was a ripple of responses from the group of people huddled around the old battery-powered radio.  Some sounded disbelieving, others afraid.  Someone snorted.  Tommy had to catch himself from doing the same as disappointment fell.  The message was a recording – playing now for the third day in a row.

_Reports of bodies lying in the streets have fueled widespread panic, especially as city centers struggle—_

The recorded report was suddenly drowned out by a scream behind Tommy.  Those gathered around the radio looked up and towards a middle-aged woman who sat huddled on the ground, cradling the head of a man who lay very still.  Two teenage boys stood beside her, mouths open in stunned silence.  Their mother’s anguished cries cut through the humdrum of moans and quiet sobbing that formed the background noise of the large triage, but those gathered around the radio quickly looked away with expressions of mixed guilt and pain.

Tommy watched the woman a second longer than the rest, but he too dropped his gaze.  He could hear the woman pleading for help – with a nearby doctor, with her sons, with the dead man in her lap.  Instinct still gnawed at him, pushed at him to go to the poor woman and comfort her, but it was an instinct that was already dying a swift death.  This woman’s cries for help would eventually fade to anguished sobs and then soon another wretched person would cry out the same as she had.  And others would follow.

_…warn that it may be some time before vaccination tests yield any results.  Citizens are urged instead to undertake their own precautions to avoid infection, including avoiding major population centers…_

Tommy felt a mix of anger and desolation roil in the pit of his stomach and he turned away from the group crowded around the radio.  The triage unit spread away from him in three directions, a huge series of white canvas tents, portable floodlights, and generators.  The grind and whirr of the generators went some way to drowning out the human noise in the place, but the air still thrummed with the sounds of people dying, or wanting to die, or of their loved ones begging them not to.  Tommy felt a shiver run down the length of his spine and suppressed the urge to cover his ears.

He weaved around plastic tables stacked with medical bins and stepped out of the path of a pair of orderlies carrying a stretcher covered in a white sheet.  People lay on the ground and on cots set up under the open sky.  Others leaned against cement barriers and the sides of dusty Honeybuckets.  These were the uninjured and uninfected.  Many had come with sick or hurt loved ones, but many others simply had nowhere else to go.

Tommy passed them all and entered one of the medical tents.  He made his way to the back, where a thin partition separated off four beds set close together.  The nearest was occupied by the bulky figure of a man, but thick bandages around his shoulder and torso made him look oddly misshapen.

The lack of color in Joel’s face was thrown into sharp relief by his dark hair and beard and by the angry red cuts across his face and the bridge of his nose.  Yet when his eyes flicked open at the sound of Tommy’s approach, his expression was clear.  Haunted, yes, but lucid.  He had not been sleeping.

“Well?” he said simply as Tommy drew up a folding metal chair and sat down.

Tommy shook his head.  “Same recording.  If they’re doing anything, they either don’t wanna announce it or aren’t able to anymore.”

Joel closed his eyes again and breathed deep and slow.  He lay on his side with his arms crossed, looking like a man determined to shut out the world merely by closing his eyes and clenching his jaw.  Tommy glanced down at his hands and swallowed.

“Joel, listen,” he said, leaning forward and lowering his voice.  “We gotta think about what we’re gonna do here.”  Joel did not reply, nor did he open his eyes.  Tommy continued.  “This…I mean, more’n more people are comin’ in every day.  I’m just thinkin’ it might be better to clear out to somewhere quieter ‘til they get things under control again.  Joel?”

Still Joel did not reply.  He had been like this since his fever had broken the morning before.  Distraught had been Tommy’s first thought, but it wasn’t even anything so passionate.  Disconnected.  That was the better word for it.  It was as if his brother had checked out and might never return.

Tommy sighed and crossed his arms.  He glanced up as several nurses pulled back the partition and wheeled in a woman on a gurney, transferring her to the bed beside Joel’s.  The woman’s breath came in ragged gasps and her eyes were open, wide and sightless as she stared up at the canvas roof above her.  It was the same despondency that shown in Joel’s eyes.

Outside, someone else cried for help.  And once again, no one could give it.

 

* * *

 

Joel had cried.  Tommy had never heard his brother cry before, but Joel had cried as he rocked back and forth holding Sarah.  Eventually, his tears had hushed to stifled gasps and his rocking had stilled to a rhythmic nodding, as if he could not bring himself to stop the perpetual motion.  And yet he held Sarah until the first light of a new and horrific world crept over the horizon.

He had not even been able to bury her, though he had tried.  When they laid her into a small grave dug with only a knife taken from the dead soldier’s belt, Joel had gathered up a handful of dirt.  He had stood on the edge, looking down.  Loose grit trickled out from between his fingers.  It bounced across her bloodied shirt and checkered pajama bottoms.  _I…can’t.  I’m sorry, Tommy, you gotta…I can’t._

So Tommy had buried her and Joel’s tears had dried up, replaced by emptiness.

 

* * *

 

_October 1, 2013 – 1:37pm_

“I’m just sayin’.  Whoever got it first wasn’t bit themselves.  Couldna been, since then they wouldn’t be the first one sick.  So how’d they get it, huh?”

Tommy awoke with the words halfway engulfed in a dream.  He had been dozing on and off, still sat uncomfortably in the folding metal chair.  Joel did not appear to have moved, but Tommy could see the bandages on his chest and shoulder rise and fall slowly.  Blinking and yawning, Tommy straightened, looking for the source of the words that had wakened him.

“Mr. Wendell, I’ve told you already, the government has scientists already working to answer that question.”

It was a nurse and an elderly man.  The man did not appear to be injured, for he was following the middle-aged woman as she checked the clipboards of several of the beds near to Joel’s.

“But y’need to know _now_ , don’t you?  You’re corallin’ off those who’ve been bit, but what if there’s folks in here who’ve got it and ain’t been bit?  You just got us all in here like cattle.  We could be spreadin’ it to each other and not even realize!”

The man’s voice was rising and the nurse appeared increasingly uncomfortable.  She left off inspecting a clipboard to face the man.  Her voice lowered to a gentle soothing tone.  “Mr. Wendell, please calm down.  The secure zone is safe.  The army is conducting full medical examinations of everyone who comes in.”

The elderly man’s eyes widened and his face scrunched angrily.  “Y’don’t even know what it is!  What are you examining?  What’re you lookin’ for?  Someone sick could be sittin’ right there!”  He gestured angrily towards Tommy as an example, whom he had caught watching the exchange.  The nurse paled at the man’s increasingly loud hysteria, clearly concerned about the number of worried faces now turning to look their way.

Tommy started to rise, but as he did so the partition was jerked back to reveal two soldiers in full body armor.  One of them held up a hand towards the elderly man.  “Sir, you need t’calm down.  There’s no need for all this fuss.”

“Don’t patronize me, son,” the man replied, pointing an accusatory finger.  “I ain’t stupid.  Now I’m askin’ the lady a question that you army boys didn’t wanna answer.  And it’s a good question that everyone here oughta be askin’.  How’d this whole damn thing start, anyway? Huh?  Somebody had it first and they didn’t get it by bein’ bit, so who’s t’say there ain’t someone in here right now who ain’t been bit, but who’s sick anyway?”

“Sir, this ain’t the place, all right?  People are shook up enough as it is.  Why don’t you just come on outside with us?”  The soldiers positioned themselves on either side of the man.

“No, this is _important!_ ”

The elderly man shoved at one of the soldiers in a fit of frenzy, but they moved quickly to restrain him.  Each soldier took one of his flailing arms and placed a hand on his shoulder, maneuvering him as quickly as they could to exit the crowded tent.  They were gone in a matter of seconds, but his hysterical shouting was still audible outside as a nervous silence settled over those still within.  The nurse drew a shaky breath and raised her voice so all those within the medical tent could hear.

“Y’all don’t worry now.  He’s just feelin’ a little overwhelmed.  Everything’s fine.”

Then she too left.

Tommy sat down again, feeling fairly rattled himself.  He leaned forward onto his knees and ran a hand through his hair.  Now more than ever, he could feel the weight and strain of the past few days.  This place was beginning to feel toxic, like the hopelessness was seeping into his bones.

When he looked up, he saw Joel watching him in silence.

“Hey,” Tommy said in surprise, sitting up.

Joel didn’t immediately reply, but he looked at Tommy and then out through the pulled back partition to the rest of the medical tent.  Finally, he mumbled quietly, “It’s a good question.”

“What?” Tommy asked, confused.

Joel shifted, grunting as he moved.  He looked back at Tommy.  “What he said,” he answered after a moment, voice rough from disuse.

“Oh,” Tommy nodded.  “Yeah, I guess so.  I’m sure everybody’s tryin’ to figure out how it started though, the scientists’n all.”

Joel shook his head.  “No.  What he said about how people are gettin’ sick.  About not bein’ bit.”

Tommy gave a nod of recognition, but only shrugged after.  He wasn’t sure what to say, but he also half feared that offering some sort of explanation might cause Joel to stop talking again.  This was the most liveliness that Joel had shown since they had arrived at the triage.  He had said barely two words together for the past three days.

Joel shifted again, rolling onto his back and rubbing a hand across his eyes as someone began crying outside.  “I don’t know,” he sighed.  “Maybe it’s somethin’ in the food or water.  Maybe it’s somethin’ we’re breathin’.”

Outside the crying grew louder, but Joel lapsed again into silence.  He looked tired.  Part of it was the dark shadows under his eyes, but more than that, it was that the skin of his face was slack, like someone too weary to arrange the muscles of his face into any definable expression.  Tommy swallowed and leaned forward, eager to keep Joel animated.  “So how you feelin’?”

“Fine,” he answered abruptly.  Yet the tone of his voice reassured Tommy.  That quick sort of brush off was terribly reminiscent of the Joel Tommy knew.  When his brother turned back to look at him, Tommy noted too how his brows drew together in the way they always did before he sat down to talk business.

“We should go,” Joel said quietly.  At Tommy’s questioning look, he added, “Get outta this place.”

To that Tommy nodded, pulling his chair closer to Joel and likewise lowering his voice.  “Kinda what I was thinkin’.  You that spooked by what that guy said?”

Joel shrugged.  “Just…everything.  Cause of what he said, cause there’ll be others like him.  Folks gettin’ hysterical.”  He paused, lowering his voice further and fixing Tommy with a serious look.  “And cause eventually someone’s gonna ask why they pulled a military-grade slug outta me.”

“I explained when we got here,” Tommy said, shaking his head.  “Told ‘em some guy with an assault rifle shot at us, thinkin’ we were sick.  It’s Texas,” he added with a snort.  “Half the goddamn state’s probably got assault rifles.”

Joel did not seem reassured.  “Maybe.  But once things calm down and they start pickin’ up the pieces again, someone’s gonna start askin’ questions.  Or someone’s gonna find that soldier and wonder who put a bullet in his head.”

Tommy felt himself involuntarily suck in a quick breath at Joel’s mention of that night.  It was only five days ago, but within the safe confines of the triage, Tommy had almost successfully buried the memory.  Now the images raced back to him.  A gas mask jerking suddenly from the force of a bullet.  The smell of gunpowder.  Blood strewn across the gravel.  All flashed before him in a heartbeat.  The memory of Sarah dying left Tommy empty with grief, but those were not the images of that night that most haunted him.

It had happened so quickly and felt so necessary at the time, but what Joel said made sense.  As bad as things seemed now, eventually the government would regain some measure of control over this epidemic.  And when that happened, there was no guarantee the law would be forgiving of individual actions taken under extraordinary circumstances.

“Okay then,” Tommy said.  “What do we do?”

“Do you still have my gun?”

 Tommy shook his head. “They wouldn’t let me into the place with it.  Confiscated it at the fence.”

Joel made an irritated face and rolled his eyes.  With emotions already pricked by memories, Tommy felt his temper abruptly flare at his brother’s annoyed expression.  “Well what the hell was I supposed to do, Joel?  You had a goddamn bullet in you.  You were burnin’ up with fever.  And I’d probably have killed you if I’d tried to take it out.”

Joel waved a hand dismissively.  “Nevermind.  Probably better anyway.  They can’t tie it back to us now if anyone ever finds that soldier.  But Tommy, if we’re goin’ back out there, we gotta have a gun.  Both of us.”

“Well what do you want me to do?  Steal one?” Tommy asked the question as if it weren’t truly an option, but Joel’s face was dead serious as he gave a single nod.  Tommy sat up in surprise, his brows knitting together.

“If that’s what it takes,” Joel muttered quietly.

 Tommy opened his mouth to reply, but found no words.  He made a disbelieving noise and shook his head, his voice sinking to a whisper.  “Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

“Then are you hearin’ yourself?  You’re talkin’ about stealin’ from the military.”

“Tommy, _listen_ ,” Joel snapped back.  He too was whispering, but there was no mistaking the terse older brother tone in his voice.  It usually either ignited their arguments or put an end to them before they could begin.  “Look around you.  Things are gonna be different for awhile.  Right now, we gotta look after ourselves.”

Tommy sat back, his shoulders slumping as he sank against the metal back of his chair.  He shook his head in continuing disbelief.  “Fine,” he said finally, with resignation.  “Fine.  I’ll find us somethin’.”

At least stealing a few guns was less likely to leave him with nightmares.

 

* * *

 

_October 1, 2013 – 7:12pm_

The military transport truck was not being watched.  It had pulled into a side street just outside the main triage area and unloaded several crates of food that the soldiers were now distributing to a line of people at the center of the triage.  Floodlights lit the area, but outside the triage itself, night had fallen.

Tommy cast a final glance back at the soldiers handing out sandwiches and MREs, then ducked out of the glare of the floodlights.  He made straight for the truck, glancing around him to make sure he was not seen.  In the darkness outside the triage, no one was watching.

The truck was unlocked, though it made more noise than Tommy was comfortable with when he opened the driver-side door.  Inside was dark, no helpful dome light to illuminate the cab.  Instead, Tommy had to wait for a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the murky interior.  He could make out the battered seats and steering column.  Crawling into the cab, he began to feel his way around, checking under and on top of the seats, around the gear stick, and even up on the ceiling.

He found what he was looking for under the passenger seat.  There were two handguns: a 9 mm pistol that looked military-issue and a .357 revolver that Tommy suspected had been confiscated or found on the street at some point because a chunk of the handle was missing.  Both were loaded, but he found no spare ammunition.  These would have to do for now.

Tommy climbed down from the cab and shut the door as quietly as he could manage.  No one appeared to have noticed him.  As for the two guns, he tucked them into an old gym bag that he had found abandoned behind a line of Honeybuckets.  Also inside the bag were a few rolls of gauze, alcohol swabs, medical tape, and a small bottle of antibiotics – all that he had been able to quietly pocket in preparation for Joel’s medical needs once they left the triage.  Their plan was to leave before dawn the next day.  Tommy was uncertain if the military was actually letting anyone leave the safe zone, but they did not intend to find out.  They would slip away on their own to avoid the risk of prying questions.

As Tommy neared the floodlights again, however, a cry shattered the evening air.  No, not even a cry, for it was not a sound of grief.  It was one of panic.  Someone was screaming.

He could see those waiting in the food line begin to look around in alarm and the soldiers distributing rations were suddenly grabbing guns and running in the direction of one of the medical tents.  Joel’s tent.  His pulse quickening, Tommy began running after them, boots crunching gravel as he reentered the floodlit triage.  Joel’s tent felt painfully far away and Tommy found himself pushing and shoving his way through the crowd of people assembled at the center of the triage.

“Move! C’mon people, outta my way!” he yelled as he weaved around bewildered onlookers.  There were shouts of panic from some as they tried to get farther away from the commotion.  Others were running towards the tent in question, either out of curiosity or hoping to help.

The gunshots rang out just as Tommy reached the mouth of the tent.  A quick smattering of automatic rifle fire echoed loudly across the triage, bringing screams of terror from those both within and outside the tent.  Tommy fought against a sudden wave of people attempting to flee the tent’s interior.

“Joel!  Joel!”  Tommy’s cries were lost amidst the screaming crowd, but he moved to the side of the tent, buffeted by people pushing past him.

The crowd parted for a moment and Tommy caught a glimpse of the scene at the center of the makeshift facility.  The body of a woman lay face up, bloody gunshot wounds staining her chest and stomach.  Half a dozen soldiers surrounded the dead woman, but several others – a doctor and two people who looked like patients – sat trembling on the ground not far from the corpse.  Each appeared to be nursing bloody limbs.

The crowd was thinning some and Tommy could make out pieces of what the soldiers were saying.

“—checked for bites? Who examined her?”

“—said she was unresponsive. If she was infected—“

“—you the only ones she got a hold of?”

“Any family?  Anyone she came in with?”

“—wasn’t bitten, then how’d she turn?”

“Anyone else who’s been unresponsive?”

“—cause a fuckin’ panic out there—“

“—additional resources to check everyone else—“

They all seemed to be talking over and across each other, simultaneously grilling the witnesses to the incident and barking orders and information into their radios.

Tommy made a beeline for the back of the tent where Joel’s bed was.  As he did so, he got a better look at the dead woman and realized with a jolt that he recognized her.  It was the woman who had been set up in the bed beside Joel’s that very morning.  Tommy drew a quick breath and looked away, desperate now to find his brother.

The partition at the rear of the large medical tent had been torn back, presumably by the infected woman or her victims as they fled.  Tommy’s breath caught in his throat as he saw Joel’s bed thrown on its side, but a ripple of relief spread through him just a second later as he caught sight of Joel beneath it, struggling to lift the heavy medical bed off of himself with his unbandaged arm.

“Joel!” Tommy sighed gratefully, immediately bending down to pull the bed off of his brother.

“Tommy,” Joel grunted with equal relief.  “They shot her?”

Tommy nodded as he took Joel’s good hand and started to pull his brother to his feet.  “You were right, Joel,” he explained quickly but quietly.  “She was sick.  She wasn’t bitten, but she had it.”

“I know, goddammit,” Joel growled in response.  He roughly jerked his bandaged shoulder and Tommy saw where the thick swath of gauze and cloth had been messily torn apart, as if savaged by a wild animal.

“Holy shit,” Tommy breathed, eyes widening.  “Did she get you?  Did she actually bite you?”

“No!”

Tommy shook his head, breathing fast.  “We gotta go, Joel.  We gotta go.  They got others corralled out there who got bit.  If they don’t believe you, they’re gonna put you into the quarantine with the rest of ‘em and once they start turnin’—“

“I know!” Joel cut off Tommy’s unnerved rambling with a sharp whisper.  “You got the guns?”  Tommy nodded.  “Then c’mon.”

Joel dropped to the ground again, kneeling on one knee and pulling up the edge of the canvas tent.  Tommy reached out and pulled up more of the tent to allow Joel to awkwardly maneuver under the canvas using only his good arm for support.  Then Tommy too dropped to his knees and crawled under.

It was dark on the backside of the tent.  It had been set up against the side of one of several brick office buildings that surrounded the square where the triage was located.  Tommy could hear a mix of screaming and shouting in the direction of the floodlights.  A litany of diesel engines punctuated the sounds of the crowd and Tommy guessed the military was bringing in reinforcements to control the sudden wave of panic spreading through the already tense triage.  Joel started moving to find a way around the brick building they were fenced in by.

“Joel, wait,” Tommy whispered, swinging the old gym bag off his shoulder.  He pulled out the pistol and tossed it to his brother, who caught it with his good hand.  “It’s loaded.  Couldn’t see how many rounds.”

“You got a flashlight?” Joel said tersely.  Tommy could hear him checking the safety on the gun.

“No, I didn’t expect to leave ‘til mornin’.”

“Nevermind.  It don’t matter.”  Joel did not shove the gun into his belt, but held it out as if ready to use it.  He paused and looked back at Tommy.  Even in the darkness, Tommy could feel the intensity of his brother’s expression.  He was stealing himself for a return to the world outside the safety of the military-guarded triage, a world that had now had three more days to fall apart since last they had seen it.  “Are you good?”

Tommy took a breath and nodded.  “I’m good.”

“Alright.  Let’s go then.”


	2. Campstove Coffee

_October 2, 2013 – 5:12pm_

“Joel, I don’t think anyone’s gonna look too closely at one dead soldier.”

Joel glanced sidelong at his brother, then nodded softly.  “Yeah.”

The residential street they stood on was like many they had seen already: abandoned and lonely, with a discomforting mix of the shockingly ordinary and the painfully out of place.  Plastic chairs and garden tables sat beneath broken windows.  In driveways, cars with doors ajar and luggage spilled angrily out the back were kept company by tidy garbage cans and kids’ basketball hoops.  And across neatly manicured lawns and white sidewalks, the bodies of the dead lay bloated and stiff.

The street was not strewn with the dead, as some reports had said city streets were, but there were enough scattered bodies to give Tommy a jolt each time he spotted another.  Some lay spilling out of cars, others crumpled beneath mailboxes.  Many looked to have been torn apart.

Like Joel, Tommy had spent weekends as a kid hunting and visiting their grandparents’ farm outside Austin.  It was not the gruesome sight of dead things that turned his stomach.  It was the time and place.  The old world was juxtaposed so freshly against the new and it felt fundamentally, instinctively wrong.

Wrong.

“Jesus, how the hell did this happen?” Joel muttered, not for the first time.

Tommy did not reply.

The triage and safe zone were a day behind them.  It had been erected in a town called Leland, notable to Tommy mainly for the big Goodwill that had been built there a few years ago and become his go-to source for old appliances and work shirts.  But Leland was small and had quickly turned to rural countryside not long after Tommy and Joel had left the triage.  That was fortunate.  The sick had been noticeably drawn to the fences and cement barriers that defined the edges of the safe zone, but they had disappeared as soon as Tommy and Joel had begun to leave buildings behind.  At least, if they were there, Tommy had not seen them.  So far, the sick had left them alone.

“One of these places has t’be empty,” Joel said, looking around them. New bandages were wrapped inexpertly around his shoulder, but his voice had the pinched quality of someone deeply weary and too stubborn to admit it.

“Most of ‘em, I’d reckon,” Tommy replied.  “C’mon.  One’s as good as the next.”  He started up towards a light brown house whose door stood ajar.  An aging station wagon sat locked in the driveway.

“Maybe not that one,” Joel muttered tiredly behind him, but whatever misgivings he had were not apparently strong enough to overcome his exhaustion.  Tommy seemed not to hear his brother and Joel did not protest again.

Tommy mounted the wooden porch and knocked lightly on the open door.  “Hullo?  Anyone home?”  There was no answer.  He pushed against the door, opening it wider, and stepped into a living room with an L-shaped sofa and flower-print curtains.  The place had a hint of mustiness, like coming home after an extended vacation.

“I think we’re good,” he said, looking back at Joel as his brother stepped into the doorway.  Yet as Joel’s boots scrapped against the entryway floorboards, Tommy heard a scuffling up the stairs to the right of the front door.  “Hello?” he called out again, now reaching for the revolver stuffed into his back pocket.

An inhuman screech responded, followed by a thunderous pounding of feet upstairs and the sound of rapid panting, like a dog.  Tommy backed away from the stairs and into the living room, eyes growing wide as he pulled the revolver free of his pocket.

“Tommy!” Joel yelled suddenly.

Two figures were bounding down the stairs.  Two figures which should have been human, but weren’t.  They moved in a crouched manner, with fingers and arms curling like an animal’s.  One was dressed in a woman’ sport jacket, the other in slacks and a man’s collared shirt.

Joel already had his pistol out and was backing into the living room alongside his brother, but Tommy was shouting at the two creatures as they awkwardly fought each other to maneuver down the stairs at the same time.

“Stop!  Wait, stop, we’ll shoot!  Goddamnit!”

Joel’s pistol discharged twice in quick succession, but the bullets only jerked the man’s shoulder back twice, stalling him at the bottom of the stairs, but not stopping him.  Joel was right-handed, but he was shooting with his uninjured left arm.

“Shoot ‘em, goddamnit!” Joel growled urgently between gunshots.  He fired twice more and two clouds of red erupted across the man’s collared shirt as he tumbled forward and onto his chest.  Tommy clenched his teeth as the woman hit the bottom of the stairs.  He squeezed the trigger once, then twice.  The revolver leapt back in his hand and the woman jerked awkwardly backwards a step before thumping against the wall behind her and sliding to the ground.  Blood spray stained the white plaster.

Neither of the sick moved.

Tommy and Joel stood there in silence for a moment, only the smell of gunpowder and their rapid breathing disturbing the still sense of abandonment that quickly filled the empty house again.  After a moment and a shaky breath, Tommy lowered his revolver and slowly popped out the cylinder.  He could feel the shake in his fingers as he removed the spent cartridges.  Three bullets remained.

The movement seemed to bring Joel back into focus.  Abruptly, his expression darkened and he shot Tommy a sharp look.  “What the hell, Tommy?” he scowled.

“What?” Tommy replied, instantly defensive.

“You can’t _hesitate_ like that.  They were nearly goddamn on top of us.”

“I wasn’t gonna shoot ‘em ‘til I was sure they were sick, Joel.”

Joel’s eyes narrowed and he frowned angrily.  “They were sick, Tommy.  Real people don’t sound like that.”

“Well, I wanted t’be sure.  I wanted t’be _sure_ , Joel,” Tommy said through clenched teeth as he followed his brother.  Joel was moving to crouch over the dead man and woman.

Joel shook his head impatiently as he flipped the man over onto his back.  “Jesus Christ,” he muttered, more to himself than Tommy.  He knelt next to the dead man. “Look at his eyes.”

The dead man was jowly and graying, probably a middle-aged businessman who had once commuted into Austin during the day and watched the evening news over a glass of wine at night.  But now, his face was a ruin.  His eyes were shot through with red and tears of blood had welled up and seeped out of the sockets.  His pupils were misaligned – his left eye pointed up towards his temple, but his right eye pointed down.  Blood had flowed from his nose, trailing down over his lips and chin and spotting his shirt.  Pulsing veins stood out across his cheeks and brow like fat purple fingers.

Joel seemed to suppress a shiver and looked back angrily at Tommy.  “You sure now?”  He scrambled back to his feet, muttering.  “Christ.  You even suspect, Tommy – you shoot.  Cause _that’s_ what you get if you’re wrong.”

Tommy continued brooding over the bodies.  His brother left him, moving further into the house to explore, but Tommy stood there in silent frustration, halfway understanding Joel’s sentiment and halfway pissed as hell.  He did not have long to entertain his irritation, however.  Another scream, more distant, suddenly broke the silence.

“What the hell?” Tommy muttered, looking up in renewed alarm.  Joel had heard it too and he moved quickly to the windows of the living room, pulling back the flower-print curtains and searching the residential street from which they had just come.

“Shit,” Joel murmured under his breath.  He spun away from the window and waved impatiently at Tommy.  “There’s more of ‘em on the street.  Must’ve heard the gunshots.  We gotta go.”

A glance through the living room window and Tommy could see a handful of figures loping down the street in their direction.  He cursed under his breath and pushed the front door closed, hurrying to follow Joel down the hallway that lead from the living room to the kitchen.  A backdoor with venetian blinds in disarray stood next to the refrigerator.  Joel fumbled with the lock for a moment before he managed to open it.

The backyard was mercifully quiet.  A long disused barbeque stood beside a picnic table and several folding lawn chairs.  An unadorned wooden fence ran alongside the back end of the yard, but nothing separated it from the yards on either side.  Pistol still held aloft, Joel turned left and began lightly jogging for the next house over.  Now that they were outside again, Tommy could hear the unearthly screams and growls coming from the sick that were now beating at the front door of the house they had just left.  He jogged quickly after Joel.

They crossed several yards and passed several houses before the sounds of the sick faded.  Joel finally slowed at a yard with overlong grass and a covered back porch that attached to a two-story house with fading red paint.  He stood and listened for a moment, and when he heard nothing, he mounted the steps to the back porch.  The door was locked, but Joel scooped up a shovel that was leaning against the house’s siding and jammed the leaf-shaped head into the side of the door near the handle and lock.

“Tommy, help me,” he grunted, weariness sapping what little strength his one good arm still had.  Tommy grabbed the shovel’s handle as Joel threw his weight against it and together the two brothers pushed.  The door groaned, squealed, then snapped, flying open with a spray of wood splinters as the socket housing the deadbolt broke under the leverage of the shovel.  They strained for any sounds that might indicate the noise had roused anyone, sick or otherwise, within the house.

Nothing.

Joel blew out an exhausted sigh through his nose, relief plain on his face.  “C’mon.  Let’s clear the place.”  He sounded nearly breathless, as if the fading adrenaline from the encounter with the two sick people had redoubled the fatigue that had already set in from a day of walking.

The house was small and did not take them long to clear. The front door had been neatly locked and the tops of several bookcases in the living room had bare spots amidst the dust where family photos had likely once stood.  A white work truck stood in the driveway.  Yet however orderly had been this family’s flight, they did not appear to have returned.  The two bedrooms upstairs still had tousled sheets and blankets that had likely been thrown off the night that hell had descended.

Tommy cleared the kitchen and dining room downstairs and eventually found Joel in the master bedroom at the top of the stairs.  His brother’s face looked haggard and gray as he was coming out of the master bathroom.

“All clear,” Joel muttered.

“And downstairs,” Tommy returned.

Joel nodded slowly.  He gave the bedroom a final sweeping look, then abruptly sat down on the bed and swung his legs up, boots and all.  He lay back gently, favoring his bandaged arm but nonetheless sinking heavily into the disarrayed sheets and pillows.

“You gonna sleep?” Tommy said.  Outside, the sky was glowing orange with the setting sun.

“Gonna try,” Joel sighed.  He closed his eyes.

Tommy eyed his brother with concern, not moving from the doorway.  “You don’t wanna eat somethin’ first?”

Joel shook his head and kept his eyes closed.  “Honest, Tommy, I don’t think I could keep anything down.”

Tommy nodded.  He could feel his own stomach curling in protest at its emptiness, but even so, the combination of fatigue and vague nausea at the memory of the dead businessman did not put him in a mood to eat.  “Alright then,” he replied.  “Well, I’ll see what I can find downstairs and bring somethin’ up here.  Just in case you get hungry in the middle of the night.”

He started to turn away to head downstairs, but Joel abruptly opened his eyes and turned his head to look at his brother.  “Tommy.”

Tommy stopped, looking back with a hand still on the doorjamb.

Joel was quiet for a second.  “Thanks,” he said finally with a single nod.

Tommy frowned in grave acknowledgement.  But after a second, he snorted lightly.  “I just gotta shoot quicker next time, right?”

The barest hint of a smirk crept into Joel’s cheeks as he closed his eyes again and turned his head away.  “And conserve ammo, like I did,” he added with heavy irony.

Smiling tiredly, Tommy shook his head and left Joel to sleep.

 

* * *

 

_October 3, 2013 – 10:26am_

It was mid-morning by the time Joel came downstairs.  He walked slowly and gingerly, wincing whenever he moved the wrong way and keeping a hand on the wall to steady himself.  All of yesterday, as they had made their way out of Leland on foot, Tommy had suspected his brother was in far more pain that he was willing to admit.  Today confirmed that.  Joel looked ten years older than he was.

“Jesus, Joel,” Tommy said, looking up from a small breakfast table he was sitting at as Joel shuffled into the kitchen.  Tommy rose quickly, but his brother waved him off, crossing the kitchen and sinking into a second chair at the table.

“I’m fine,” Joel muttered roughly, cutting off the question on Tommy’s lips.

Tommy’s eyes narrowed and he bit back a retort.  Yet he remained standing, brushing past Joel and moving to the kitchen counter, where a sizeable array of odds and ends had been gathered.  Tommy had spent several hours the night previous going through the house, raiding cupboards for pills, first aid supplies, non-perishable food, and other useful gear.  Whoever had lived here had kept only a sparse supply of first aid materials – Tommy had found only a single roll of gauze, an ace bandage, and a few sterile pads – but the number of pill bottles was voluminous.  Tommy thumped down several bottles of ibuprofen, Tylenol, and Motrin in front of Joel.

 “Take your pick, tough guy.”

 Joel made an annoyed sound under his breath, but did not protest.

“Doubt they’ll do much more’n take the edge off,” Tommy said, watching as Joel selected the ibuprofen.  “I’ll go out in a bit and see if any of the other houses have somethin’ stronger.  Plenty of folks who never throw out their pills after surgery.  I had half a bottle of oxycodone sittin’ on my shelf for years after I tore up my knee on that admin building job.”

It vaguely occurred to Tommy that less than a day ago he had balked at the idea stealing a couple of guns.  Yet now, outside the safety of the triage, breaking into abandoned houses felt oddly less objectionable.

Joel grunted lightly in acknowledgement, but abruptly twisted in his chair, sniffing the air.  “What’s that smell?”

Tommy gave a small smile.  “Coffee.”

Joel's eyes narrowed. “Like hell it is.”

Tommy shrugged nonchalantly with a ghost of a grin. “Well, if you don't want any...”

His brother grimaced in pain as he tried to twist further to look Tommy full in the face. “Goddamn, Tommy. You're shovin' pills in front of me when you got coffee?"

“Coffee won't kill the pain.”

“It'll help.”

Tommy shook his head with a true grin now as he turned away from Joel to face the kitchen counter. He had found an old camp stove in the garage and a strainer and several gallon jugs of water in the kitchen. Although it wasn't a perfect setup by any means, he had placed a coffee filter and ground coffee into the strainer and poured boiling water through it. A half full pot of the stuff now sat gently steaming beside the camp stove.

Tommy poured two cups.

“Nicely done, little brother,” Joel said appreciatively as Tommy set one of the cups in front of him. He immediately lifted it and began drinking.

Tommy smiled. That had felt almost normal. Like Joel had dropped in after work and was ribbing Tommy again for having shit coffee. Like they weren't brewing coffee through a strainer on a camp stove, in a house they had broken into, on a street filled with emptiness and the dead. Like Sarah wasn't gone.

The abruptness of that memory sobered Tommy with a stab of guilt and his smile faded. He had hoped Joel's exhaustion last night would have helped his brother sleep soundly, but in the bedroom beside Joel's, Tommy had woken more than once to the sounds of thrashing and muffled shouts next door.  For his own part, Tommy had needed half a glass of the Jim Beam he had found above the refrigerator before sleep had finally taken him.

The two of them sat in silence for a good while – Joel sipping his coffee and Tommy absently cupping his own mug as he sat sideways on his chair, back against the kitchen wall.  Neither of them had ever been the chatty sort, but now the silence between them was filled with discomfort, a reminder of the eggshells that Tommy had been walking around his brother since Sarah’s death.

Tommy cleared his throat finally.  “So, you given any thought to where we might go from here?”

Joel slowly lowered his coffee, eyes sinking to the kitchen table.  After a moment, he shook his head and looked up.  “No,” he murmured.  He drew a deep breath and sighed heavily, shaking his head again.  “Honest, Tommy, I thought…I dunno.  I didn’t think it’d be this bad out here.  I figured Leland was a disaster waitin’ to happen, but I dunno now.  At least there were people there.  If there’s anyone out here, we ain’t seen ‘em.”

Tommy nodded in agreement.  “I figured we’d at least see the army or somebody out here tryin’ to get things under control.”

“Maybe they’re tryin’ to clear out the cities first.”

Tommy started to nod again, but instead shook his head and snorted in vague disbelief.  “But where the hell is everyone?  How we ever gonna find anyone in all this mess?  Mom, dad? Aunt Janey?  Meemaw and Grandpa Jim?  Hell, I’d even like to know what happened to the likes of Tom Bertie and Ollie Hughes.”

Joel’s expression noticeably darkened at the mention of various family members and old work buddies.  His gaze dropped again, first merely to the table, but slowly it slid to his left hand, to his left wrist, to the watch wrapped around it.  With a jolt, Tommy noticed the watch for the first time.  He recognized it.  Of course.  Sarah had been so smug when she had called him with the perfect idea for a birthday gift for her dad and convinced Tommy to drive her down to the local mall.  He had even leant her $20 to supplement what she had saved for the watch already.  Jesus.  She must have given it to Joel the night she had died.

Again memories of that night flooded involuntarily back to Tommy.  It was frightening how easy it was to suppress them in the midst of everything that had happened and was still happening.  Frightening to think they could share moments of brief levity over coffee when Joel had lost a daughter less than a week ago.

Tommy swallowed and looked up at his brother from under heavy brows.  “You know,” he offered quietly, careful not to let his voice catch in his throat.  “When this is all done, we can go back.  Give her…give her a proper burial.  Someplace nice.  Somewhere she’d like.”

Joel was silent a long time.  He did not look up at Tommy, but it seemed like all the energy had drained from him, slowly slumping his shoulders and casting a wretched pallor over his face.  Subtle muscles twitched around his eyes and mouth.  For a second, Tommy wondered if Joel was fighting back tears.

Yet when Joel finally drew a deep breath, his jaw tightened and his lips pressed together.  He looked up with a hard expression that raised the hairs on the back of Tommy’s neck.

“I don’t think it’s ever gonna be done, Tommy.”

And with that, he stood and shuffled out of the kitchen. His coffee sat forgotten on the table.

 

* * *

 

_October 3, 2013 – 1:05pm_

They did not speak the rest of the morning, save for when Tommy had to change Joel’s bandages.  It was an inexpert job.  With only the sparse supplies they had carried from the triage and found in the house, Tommy had placed several sterile pads over the gunshot wound, then ended up wrapping Joel’s shoulder in dishtowels and using the ace bandage to hold it all together.  It would have to do until they could find something better.

After that though, they had each retired to different areas of the house.  Now that it was daylight, Tommy had resumed scavenging the place to look for anything useful, but Joel had lain down on the living room couch in an effort to avoid inflaming his bandaged shoulder.  A spy thriller from the house’s small collection of books lay open on his chest, but mostly Joel had spent the morning dozing in and out.  Tommy had seen him jerk awake more than once.

As the afternoon drew on, however, Tommy fixed them up some tomato soup and baked beans on the camp stove.  Joel was eating his on the couch when Tommy entered the doorway that separated the kitchen from the living room.

“Do you hear that?” he said slowly, looking up at the ceiling as if listening to something outside the house.  Joel glanced up in surprise, dropping a spoonful of beans back into his bowl.  He listened too.

Outside.  A low, distant rumbling.

It was getting louder.

“What is that?” Joel muttered, his brow furrowing.  A few more seconds and the sound grew clearer.  “Chopper?”

_Whumpa whumpa whumpa whumpa._

“Holy _shit_ ,” Tommy said suddenly.  He dashed for the front door as Joel scrambled up from the couch.  Together, they unlocked the deadbolt and jerked open the door.  A quick glance up and down the street confirmed it was still abandoned and they poured out, thumping quickly down the front steps and out into the driveway, eyes strained skywards.

There it was!  A helicopter, a Huey painted army green, was flying slowly over the neighborhood, following the direction of the street on which they stood.  Tommy ran out into the middle of the street and began waving as the aircraft neared them.  Joel joined him, placing a hand over his brow to shield against the glare of the sun.

_WHUMPA WHUMPA WHUMPA WHUMPA._

Tommy looked back at Joel and, as he did so, he noticed movement in front of a house several doors down from the home they had occupied.  Three people were creeping warily out a front door – real people, ones who moved without the animalistic crouch of the sick.  His eyes widening, Tommy began to look all around them.  Doors were opening up and down the road and others were shuffling out onto the street as well, all looking towards the approaching helicopter.  Maybe twenty people in all.

A bearded man clutching a hunting rifle was nearest to Tommy and Joel.  Trailing him was a woman Tommy assumed to be the man’s wife.  They both looked at Tommy with wide eyes and open mouths, but after a second, they turned to stare at the helicopter rather than try to shout above the din of its walloping blades.

A loud speaker suddenly crackled to life from the helicopter, loud enough to be heard above the noise of its flight.

_Attention, attention.  The military has set up a quarantine zone for survivors in Huntersville.  Repeat, the military has set up a quarantine zone for survivors in Huntersville.  We are discontinuing rescue missions for stranded residents.  All private citizens are urged to make their way to Huntersville.  Do not approach the infected.  Do not attempt to enter Austin.  Repeat, do not attempt to enter Austin._

The man with the beard looked back down at Tommy, confusion written across his face.  “Why are they quarantining people who aren’t sick?” he shouted above the noise.  Tommy shook his head and held up his hands to indicate he knew no more than the man.

_Get back in your homes!  Hey, look out!_

Tommy’s head swiveled back to look at the helicopter as the voice over the loud speaker suddenly shifted from military formal to panicked alarm.  A soldier perched on the edge of the helicopter’s open side door was pointing further down the street and Tommy turned to look.

Infected were running into the street, drawn by the noise of the helicopter and loud speaker.  Tommy even saw some crashing through a front room window, apparently having previously been trapped within the house.  Amid the din of the helicopter’s thrashing blades, they had not heard the screams that accompanied the approach of the sick.  Now at least half a dozen were sprinting, crazed and ravenous, after various groups of people who had been drawn out of their homes by the sound of the aircraft.  Three of them were galloping towards Tommy, Joel, and the couple with the hunting rifle.

Without hesitation this time, Tommy grappled to pull the revolver from his belt.  To either side of him, he could see Joel raising his pistol and the bearded man lifting his rifle.  Nearly at once, all three men fired.  Two of the infected toppled forward immediately and the third followed a second later when the bearded man fired a second time.

In those few moments, the helicopter had already begun to draw away from the street and the noise it generated was fading as it moved into the distance.  Eyes wide and nostrils flaring, the man with the rifle began swinging it around in all directions, the stock still couched against his shoulder.

“D’you see any more?  Where are they?  D’you see any?” he was saying rapidly.

“They’re all up the street,” Joel replied, pointing further up the road with his pistol.  “I suggest we make ourselves scarce.”

 The man swung round with his rifle to stare down the barrel at Tommy and Joel.  Terror was written plain across his face.

“Whoa now!” Joel said suddenly, instinctively bringing his own gun to bear on the man.

“What the hell’s wrong with you?” the bearded man demanded, pointing with his rifle at the bandages covering Joel’s shoulder.

“Nothin’!”

“That ain’t fuckin’ nothin’!  You been bit?”

Tommy threw up both his hands and stepped between Joel and the man.  “Hey now, let’s just all calm down—“

“ _Were you fuckin’ bit?_ ”

In an instant all four people were shouting at once.

“What the hell are you doin’?”

“Randy, stop it!”

“What’s wrong with him?!”

“He ain’t bit!  He ain’t fuckin bit!”

“Tommy, outta the goddamn way!”

Absurdly, only the inhuman screams of the infected restored some measure of sanity to the panicked standoff.  They all looked up as more of the sick began racing towards them, attracted by their shouting.  Tommy glanced at the rushing infected and back at the bearded man, then shook his head violently.

“Screw it!”  He turned and ran towards Joel, grabbing Joel’s gun hand as he did so and jerking it downward so that Joel was no longer aiming at the bearded man.  “ _C’mon_ , Joel!”

His brother looked surprised for a moment, then huffed out a breath and nodded hard.  “Into the house,” he growled, turning with Tommy.

Together they scrambled back up the driveway and past the white work truck parked there, pounding up the front steps and through the front door as fast as Joel could run.  Tommy could hear the frenzied panting of the infected behind them and dared not even risk a look back lest it slow him down.  They flew into the house, Joel leading and Tommy only inches behind him.  Joel spun around, suddenly crying out in pain at the abrupt movement, but he grabbed the front door and slammed it closed.  A second later, it jumped and thumped with the weight of bodies being thrown against it.

Joel backed away, staring at the door as Tommy put his back against it and sank to the floor, knees against his chest.  Both stared at each other, breathing hard and fast.

Outside, wild fists pounded furiously against the door and fingernails scraped and scratched as the infected fought against the two inches of wood that separated them from their prey.


	3. Lists

_October 7, 2013 – 5:15pm_

The army had set up a winding series of chain link fences behind the cement barricades and sandbag walls that marked the edges of the Huntersville Quarantine Zone.  Soldiers armed with assault rifles and gas masks patrolled the outer perimeter while lines of refugees crowded into the zigzag pathways defined by the fences.  Dozens of feet shuffled in uneven rhythm as each new person was called forward.  The air thrummed with a combination of relief and anxiety, the relative sanctuary of the quarantine zone offset by the grim, dark expressions the soldiers wore around them.

Joel and Tommy were waved forward as they came to the front of the line.  A soldier gestured towards one of several metal tables that had been set up under a camouflage canopy, where a young private in military fatigues held out a hand as they approached.

“Any identification?” he said without ceremony.

“Just me,” Tommy replied, pulling his billfold from his back pocket.  He flipped it open and drew out a discolored driver’s license.  The private took it and set it on the desk in front of him.  He immediately began scribbling down information into a plain, lined notebook.

After a second, he looked up again and handed back the license as he pointed at Joel.  “You related?”

“Brothers,” Tommy nodded.

“Name?”

“Joel.”

The soldier looked down again, scribbling across a new line.  “Joel and Thomas Miller, brothers,” he muttered, loud enough for them to hear and correct any inaccuracies.  “Hometown: Perkins, Texas.  Thomas,” he continued, pointing at Tommy as he read. “Date of birth: January 5, 1988.  Height: 5’11”. Weight: 205 pounds.  Eye color: brown.”  Finished, he looked up at Joel expectantly.

Joel cleared his throat.  “6’2”, 220, brown,” he said stiffly.

The soldier jotted down the information.  “Birthday?”

“September 26, 1984.”

The scribbling stopped for a moment and the soldier looked up with raised brows, the first real hint of emotion he had yet displayed.  He regarded Joel for a moment, then snorted softly.  “Happy birthday to you,” he said with heavy irony.  Joel did not reply.

The soldier stared at Joel a second longer, then pointed at the bandage over Joel’s shoulder.  “What happened there?”

“Gunshot,” Joel muttered.  “Some crazy idiot with a rifle.”

“Yeah, we’ve had a few of them.  Somebody stitched you up?”

“We were at a triage in Leland for a few days,” Tommy offered.

That caused the soldier’s eyes to widen abruptly.  He looked between Tommy and Joel as if expecting some further explanation, and when none was forthcoming, he leaned forward.  “When?  When were you there?”

Tommy felt the pit of his stomach grow cold with apprehension.  “About six days ago?” he said quietly, tone prompting the soldier to explain.

“Oh damn,” the young man said with a heavy shake of his head.  “You got out before everything then.  Shit hit the fan.  Few days ago they called to say there were infected in the triage.  Ain’t heard nothin’ since then.”

Tommy glanced sideways at Joel, but his brother’s face was dark, eyes cast down as if unsurprised.  “They say how infected got in?” Tommy asked, turning back to the private.

The young soldier nodded.  “Spores,” he replied.  He continued as Tommy’s expression turned quizzical.  “It’s a fungus, they think.  Puts out spores, like mushrooms. You breathe ‘em in, you get infected, just the same as if you’d been bitten.  Leland was lettin’ in folks without bites, but they started turnin’ anyways.”  He sat back, shaking his head and rubbing at his tired eyes.  “We had some of that a few days ago, but nothin’ we couldn’t handle.  We ain’t takin’ any chances now, though.  You’ll get a medical exam, then go into a quarantine area for a few days before we let you into the main zone.”

The private began rustling papers as if finished interviewing them, but Joel shifted suddenly, clearing his throat.  “We been off the grid for a while,” he said quietly, his tone losing some of its edge.  “They sayin’ how many folks’ve got this thing?”

The soldier looked up, lips parting as he slowly shook his head.  He made a small disbelieving sound.  “Millions, man.  Millions.”

With that ominous comment hanging in the anxious air, they were waved forward to an uncertain future.

 

* * *

 

_November 23, 2013 – 10:24am_

The crowd rocked back and forth as people jockeyed for better positions, pressing forward into the mash of bodies, slowly forcing their way towards the front. On one side of the crowd stood a squat white building with a garish blue plastic sign that read _Astro Mart_. Bordering one side of the abandoned supermarket’s parking lot was a long brick wall papered with dozens of posters and signs.  It was towards this that the crowd was making its slow push. Word had gone out early that morning.

There was a new list from the Austin Quarantine Zone.

The Austin list stood out from the others, by far the longest of the many papers that covered the brick wall.  There were lists for other quarantine zones as well, posters with the names of people who had been identified as present within those zones, but none were as long as Austin’s.  A frenzy of excitement had accompanied the announcement of a new list from the capitol as distraught relatives had rushed to see if this most recent list contained record of the loved ones whose fates were unknown.  It was a welcome relief from the clinging dread that had settled over the Huntersville zone since the announcement three days previous that a quarantine zone in a nearby town called Jarrett had been overrun by infected.

Tommy had spent three hours slowly pressing forward with the rest of the crowd, waiting for his turn to check the list. He was close enough now to see the rows of dirty paper, each page smudged by hundreds of fingers running down the list of names. To prevent a crush of desperate refugees, soldiers were only allowing small groups of people to push right up against the posted lists. As several hollow-eyed people drifted away from the wall with hopeless expressions clouding their faces once again, a soldier gestured Tommy and three others forward.

His pulse quickening, Tommy approached the wall, choosing one of a dozen posted pages to begin scanning. Now it was his grubby fingers that smudged the sheets, carefully touching each name as he searched for any that were familiar. Empty hope began to squirm in the pit of his stomach.

No names jumped out at Tommy until he had begun scanning the third page of names. _Tony Haberly_. Tommy’s finger paused and he made a face. Well, that figured. That bastard had crossed more than one picket line to work for less than Tommy’s own union men. Anything to survive then, anything to survive now.

Tommy shook his head and silently berated himself. What did it matter anyhow? That life felt like a dream now. It was hard to remember why picket lines had once seemed so important. He resumed running his finger down the list of names. Several sheets later, Tommy again paused on a name and this one involuntarily caused his breathing to quicken and a small smile to jump across his face.

_Bonnie Hopps._

An image of the petite waitress leapt to mind, her mousy brown hair pulled back messily as she hopped across the checkered floor of a snug little diner in Perkins that Joel and Tommy had frequented for dinner after work or on the weekends with Sarah. Bonnie was a sweet gal. She had frequently teased both brothers that one day she would convince one of them to take her out to a proper restaurant. Tommy suspected Joel had more than once been tempted to take her up on the dare. It was nice to know someone who deserved it had somehow survived and made it to Austin.

It took Tommy another 10 minutes to get through the remainder of the lists. There were hundreds of names, hundreds of people who had been confirmed safe inside the Austin QZ.  But in the end, only those two were familiar to Tommy. Still, that was better than most could hope for. How many thousands of names would remain black holes, never appearing on any list? How many millions?

Tommy took a deep breath and pushed the thought from his mind. He turned away from the wall and nodded at a nearby soldier, indicating he was finished. Others rushed forward almost immediately, jostling Tommy quickly away from the wall.

He found Joel waiting for him at the far edge of the crowd that had gathered in the parking lot. Joel had not joined the crowd, however. He stood leaning against an abandoned shopping cart holder, idling fiddling with the buckle on an old backpack.

“Joel,” Tommy said as he approached.

His brother looked up, brows lifting expectantly. His expression was guarded, but his tone was hopeful. “Anyone?”

Tommy nodded once and Joel straightened, putting aside the backpack he had been fingering.

“No family,” Tommy said quickly. Joel’s shoulders dropped with the same sense of resignation and hopelessness that had crept back over Tommy as he had read the lists without finding mention of even a single relative. “But two others. Tony Haberly’s alive. Kinda figures, I guess.”

Joel’s expression darkened and he frowned at the ground. Tony Haberly had once been the source of one of Tommy and Joel’s most explosive arguments, when Joel had threatened to cross one of Tommy’s damned picket lines with Tony if it meant being able to afford a new soccer jersey and cleats for Sarah. Joel had stormed out of Tommy’s house in a cloud of rage. In the end, Joel had not crossed the line, but that hadn’t prevented the two brothers from refusing to speak to each other for a month.

Tommy again felt that hollow sense of irrelevance, astounded at how much that had all seemed to matter once. He continued, brightening a little. “But you know who else is in Austin? Bonnie. Bonnie Hopps, from Fran’s.”

A smile crept into Joel’s expression as he looked up, now likewise vaguely brightening. The memory of Fran’s Place, with its awful green leather booths and 21 flavors of pie, was enough to lift even Joel’s abiding dark mood. “That right?” he said softly, smiling to himself now as he shook his head. “Good for her. That’s...that’s real good for her.”

 He continued smiling a moment longer, but slowly the brief elation faded from his demeanor.  The familiar air of brooding indifference crept back into the set of his jaw and the slouch of his shoulders. He sighed, lifting his pack over one arm. “C’mon.” He turned away from the milling crowd, heading in a direction that would take them away from the center of the Huntersville QZ.

Huntersville had been a large town, characterized mostly by the sprawl of wide streets and open spaces punctuated by stand-alone businesses. But at the town’s center was a roughly half-mile square cluster of old brick buildings and gentile row houses with white-washed faces, most of which had long ago been converted into small business spaces. It was around this more defensible cluster of buildings that the perimeters of the QZ had been erected, comprised mostly of cement barriers, sandbags, and a hodgepodge of wood and cinder blocks. The Astro Mart, once an old bottling facility, had become of an unofficial gathering place for the hundreds of refugees sheltering in Huntersville.

“You’re gonna have to pick up your own ration cards from now on,” Joel said as a change of subject once they were moving away from the Astro Mart and in the direction of a row of old businesses that had been converted into communal housing.

 “Why?” Tommy asked, looking sidelong at his brother.

“They won’t give ‘em out to friends or family no more. Said they been gettin’ folks tryin’ to take cards that don’t belong to ‘em.”

Tommy frowned. “They’ve seen us together enough to know who we are though.”

“It don’t matter,” Joel shrugged. “Said no exceptions. And bring your paperwork with you too. No QZC, no ration cards.”

“Jesus, place is turnin’ into a goddamn military camp,” Tommy said, glaring at the ground and fingering the Quarantine Zone Card in his pocket, with his personal information scrawled across it by hand. As usual, however, Joel only shrugged again.

“Just don’t make trouble about it.”

They had left the supermarket parking lot behind, but throngs of people continued to gather in idle groups in doorways and on the front stoops of the buildings they passed. A sense of vacancy lingered everywhere, from the emptiness of an abandoned attorney’s office and engraver’s shop, to the blank expressions of the teenagers playing cards on an old cardboard box outside the town’s deserted post office. Again that creeping dread gnawed at the edge of Tommy’s mind, to see the ordinary everyday thrown into stark relief by the hollow faces and idle aimlessness of hundreds of refugees. Never had Tommy felt so alone in a place so crowded.

“Stop it,” Tommy heard Joel mutter to his side. He glanced sideways in question.

“What?”

“Let it go, Tommy,” Joel grumbled without looking at his brother. His tone was not sympathetic. “Stop lookin’ around the place like that. You keep thinkin’ about how it all used t’be, you’re just gonna get yourself killed.”

Tommy made an annoyed face, pressing his lips together to bite back a testy retort. He settled for snarky instead. “That your idea of a pep talk?”

“Guess so.”

“Really rousing, thanks.”

Joel stopped in the middle of the street and turned to Tommy with a scowl. That’s how it was with Joel these days. He had always had a temper when pushed too far, but it seemed to simmer just beneath the surface all the time now, stoked by even the mildest irritation.  Joel’s dark brows drew together and he thumped a fist against Tommy’s chest. “Grow up, Tommy. You wanna pep talk? Stay alive. Get your head back on and stay alive.”

“Nice, Joel. Real nice. That’s real helpful.”

Joel shook his head and glared like he was talking to a child. “Then change the world, Tommy. Go on. Lemme know how it goes.” He reached into his backpack and pulled out a sheaf of papers, which he shoved into Tommy’s chest. Tommy reached up and caught them before Joel turned and started walking away again. Tommy glanced down at the papers in confusion. They bore the official army stamp that authenticated every QZC and any other piece of military paperwork that existed in Huntersville.

“Hey, what’s this?” Tommy said, jogging after Joel, his temper deflated by his curiosity.

“That’s makin’ us useful,” Joel replied tersely, not looking at Tommy. “I got us places on a barricade team.”

Tommy glanced down at the paperwork again, quickly scanning it. “What, guardin’ them?”

“Repairs. Buildin’ them up. Maybe puttin’ up new ones if the army clears out new areas.”

Tommy did not immediately reply, but he continued trailing after Joel as he flipped through the papers. They included details about what their new Barricade Maintenance Assignment would entail and instructed them to meet at the Astro Mart the following morning. Part of Tommy was grateful for the opportunity to be doing something other than aimlessly sitting around, but working near the barricades was not without its risks. The infected still roamed the streets outside the QZ. They traveled in packs, moving with such inhuman speed that some folks had taken to calling them Racers or Runners. With disturbing frequency, these packs would stumble across the QZ and hurl themselves against the barricades, broken fingernails flailing against the walls of wood and stone. The sound of bombs and explosions outside the zone were common as the military attempted to draw the infected away from the barricades by distracting them with noise farther afield.

“Okay,” Tommy said slowly, still following Joel. “Your shoulder gonna be okay with that?”

 Joel waved a hand dismissively. The bandages had long since come off, but he still moved his shoulder with a certain gingerness, as if the muscles had not yet fully recovered. “It’s fine. And it don’t matter anyway. Don’t tell anyone about it.”

Tommy frowned and his brow wrinkled in question. “Why not?”

“Think, Tommy,” Joel replied, tapping his temple and giving Tommy a belittling Big Brother look. “We can be the guy with the bum shoulder and the guy who mopes about the way things used t’be, or we can be the two brothers who the bosses round here count on to get things done. Which ones you think’ll keep gettin’ their rations if things ever go real bad?”

“Jesus, Joel,” Tommy snorted, clearly taken aback. “You start talkin’ like that, we’ve already lost. Only way we beat this thing is workin’ together.”

His brother almost grimaced, as if embarrassed to hear Tommy talking so optimistically. Joel shook his head and his voice lowered to a derisive mutter. “This ain’t some union, Tommy. Ain’t anybody here’s gonna stick together when push comes to shove.”

Tommy came to a slow halt with a disturbed expression, eyeing his brother.  But Joel just turned away and continued walking. Tommy did not follow him.

 

* * *

 

_November 23, 2013 – 8:20pm_

“ _Bonnie. Saw your name on the Austin list. Hope your OK. Joel and me made it out of Perkins, we’re in Huntersvile. We been here about 2 months. Joel got shot once, but he’s OK now. We’re joining a baricade crew tomorow cause we’re tired of sitting around. How’s everything in Austin? Hear about anyone else from Frans or Perkins? Sure hope your OK. Good to see a familier name on the lists finally. Tell us how your doing. Joel and Tommy Miller.”_

Tommy looked up, cocking an eyebrow towards the army cot on which Joel reclined. The pale white light of the battery-powered lantern threw awkward shadows across Joel’s face, but his eyes gleamed as he turned to look at Tommy, nodding.

“S’good,” Joel said, his voice thick. He lay with an arm drawn up under his head, absently staring up at the ceiling as Tommy had been writing.  Around them, the former café teemed with people similarly set up on cots in disorderly rows. The evening had brought relative quiet, but half a dozen lanterns still lit the place. The café was situated right on the edge of the Huntersville QZ and Tommy and Joel had been assigned cots on the second floor.  Through the quaintly paneled windows, they could see the glow of the barricade lights below.

“You wanna add anything?” Tommy said, tapping the tip of his pencil against the back of the receipt slip on which he had written the note.

His brother shook his head, turning back to look up at the ceiling. “No, that’s...that’s good. Tell her to look after herself.”

Tommy bent over the paper, balancing the receipt book on his knee and scrawling _Take care of yourself_ under their names. He read the note through again and paused. He glanced up at Joel for a second, then hunched back over. _PS. Sarah didn’t make it. Hope you didn’t lose anyone._

“When’re they takin’ these to Austin?” Joel asked quietly.

“Whenever the military goes next,” Tommy answered, folding up the note and taping it shut with the roll of dispenser-less Scotch tape they had found at the abandoned post office a few days previous. “They’re takin’ letters to some of the other zones too, or to Austin, so Austin can take ‘em to other zones. That’s what a couple of the soldiers at the Astro were sayin’. Austin’s got a whole shitload of military stuff. They’re tryin’ to get some of it out to the smaller zones, to build ‘em up. Don’t want another Jarrett.”

“Or Leland.”

Tommy nodded. He bent over the folded receipt slip and wrote, as clearly as possible: _AUSTIN. To Bonnie Hopps, formelly of Frans Place, Perkins. From Joel and Tommy Miller, Huntersvile._

“She’ll probably be glad to hear from someone from home,” Tommy said, a ghost of a grin slipping over his face as he reread the note in anticipation of what Bonnie might feel when she got it. Joel snorted, but Tommy noticed a small smile tugging at the corner of his brother’s mouth as well.

“Yeah,” Joel chuckled, as if suddenly recalling some funny moment at Fran’s. “I bet she’s just been dyin’ to hear from her two most demandin’ customers.”

Tommy grinned, happy to see Joel joking. “Aw c’mon. Y’never know,” he said with mock seriousness. “She could be desperate enough even for the likes of you and me. She might just be on her own, like us.”

He wished he hadn’t said it almost as soon as the words were out of his mouth. They had come naturally, the sort of sarcastic jibe that he’d easily have made before all of this. But desperateness was no longer hyperbole. It was not difficult to imagine that the line cooks and other waitresses with which perky, affable Bonnie had once bantered might even now be clawing at the barricades of a quarantine zone, if not already dead. It was abruptly sobering. Joel’s smile faded and he lapsed in brooding silence once more, still staring absently at the ceiling. Sighing, Tommy tucked the note into his coat pocket and did not try to lift Joel’s spirits again.

He leaned over to begin unlacing his boots, but a sudden sharp movement to his right caught his attention.

“Hey where’d you get that?”

The harsh voice of a middle-aged man Tommy had heard called Gary cut through the tired conversations of the twenty-some people who had been assigned cots on the café’s second floor. Gary was lean and gray, with ropes of muscle standing out along his long, thin arms. He stood over the cot of a younger, red-haired man named Daniel whom Tommy had spoken with only a handful of times over the past few months. Daniel lay on his stomach and looked to have been idly flipping through an old hunting magazine. Right now though, he was staring up at Gary with a wary expression, lips parted in silent question.

In his peripheral vision, Tommy saw Joel lift his head and look in Gary’s direction. Others were doing the same.

“What?” Tommy heard Daniel ask quietly.

“That,” Gary said angrily. He reached down suddenly and snatched the magazine out of Daniel’s hands. “That’s what. Where’d you get this?” He brandished the magazine as if Daniel had been caught stealing a priceless gem.

“Hey man, relax,” Daniel replied with clear annoyance, pushing himself off of his stomach as if to stand. “I just found it sittin’ round.”

“Think you can just steal people’s stuff like that?” Gary spat. The room had gone nervously silent. Tommy caught the edge of a slur in Gary’s voice, suggesting the older man had been drinking. “You’re just like them bastards who tried to loot my place. You think you can just _do_ that?” Suddenly Gary lunged forward and pushed Daniel, sending both the young man and his cot tumbling sideways and clattering to the floor.

Others were on their feet in an instant. The floorboards shook and squeaked as boots and shoes abruptly hit the ground. Several people were grabbing Gary’s shoulders and flailing arms, while others crowded around Daniel, pulling him upright and attempting to calm him as he started cursing and struggled to come to his feet and return the favor to Gary. Shouting filled the tight, tense second floor. Before he knew it, Tommy was standing in alarm, intent upon breaking up the disturbance before it got out of control, but he felt a hand grab his arm before he had taken even a single step.

“Tommy, leave it.” Tommy looked behind him to see Joel already on his feet, his expression intense and wary as he held his brother back. “ _Leave_ it,” Joel repeated.

But Tommy never had a chance to decide whether or not to take Joel’s advice. Suddenly a child’s voice rang out above all the shouting, clear as a bell.

“Infected! Outside!”

The effect was akin to shouting _Fire!_ in a crowded movie theater, save that instead of running for the exits, everyone was suddenly stumbling towards the windows, pressing against one another for a glimpse of the barricades below. Gary and Daniel were forgotten.

Outside, the barricades were lit up by a handful of battery-powered lanterns and a solitary floodlight plugged into a humming generator. From their vantage overlooking the QZ’s outer perimeter, Tommy could see the darkness outside the barricades teeming with moving bodies. He pressed against the window, switching off the lantern by which he had been working in order to better see outside. Joel joined him and Tommy could sense the tense expectation that stilled his brother’s movements.

Soldiers were on the makeshift walls and they were shouting, gesturing wildly, waving flashlights and flares. Below the barricades, outside the zone, dozens of bodies threw themselves against the crude wood and cement fortifications. But there was something abnormal about their movements. They were too controlled, too rational.

“Jesus Christ,” Tommy suddenly breathed out. “They’re not infected. They’re not infected!” The only abnormal thing about their movements was that they were not moving with the rabid ferocity that characterized the infected. They were pounding wildly against the barricades, but not clawing at them like animals. Tommy looked sideways at Joel. “Why aren’t they lettin’ them in?”

Joel tapped the window, drawing Tommy’s attention back to the street below. Now he saw it. The soldiers were wildly pointing their flashlights not at the refugees clamoring at the base of the barricades, but at what approached behind them. The darkness writhed with a mass of running bodies in the distance, all racing for the desperate refugees who pounded at the doors of the Huntersville Quarantine Zone.

“Oh dear lord, let them in! Let them in, please God!” someone cried out inanely.

The crack of a single gunshot silenced all who stood watching the horror from the second floor windows of the old café. Tommy caught sight of the muzzle flash below. A second shot followed, and then a third. And in an instant the air was thick with the clatter of gunfire and the screams of those outside the walls. Tommy could see the horde of sprinting infected slow its rapid approach as the bodies of those at the fore jerked and lurched with the force of bullets tearing flesh. But still the infected rushed up the street, an unrelenting wave of terror careening towards the Huntersville barricades.

“Oh my god, oh my god,” a woman to Tommy’s left suddenly began whispering, her voice catching as if she could barely find the breath to get the words out. “They’re shooting them. They’re shooting them. They’re actually shooting them.”

“Holy shit,” Joel murmured, nose pressed nearly against the glass.

“They’re not infected,” Tommy said breathlessly as realization dawned. “They’re not shootin’ the infected. Joel, they’re not shootin’ the infected.”

And they weren’t. Or at least, that’s not all they were shooting. Even from above, it was clear the soldiers below were firing at both infected and uninfected alike. Waves of bullets mowed through the refugees pounding at Huntersville’s gates, spraying gouts of blood across the gray asphalt of the street. As the desperate refugees turned to flee the gunmen on the wall, they met only the rushing onslaught of the infected. The sound of gunfire joined with the hungry howls of Runners and the wild screams of the unfortunate souls caught in between. The street gleamed with slick red blood.

The onlookers on the second floor of the old café said nothing. Even those who had initially cried out subsided into silence, mouths aghast with soundless horror as the blood bath continued below. How long it continued was impossible to say. But when it did finally stop, when the sound of gunfire and the wild shrieks of the infected had finally abated, the silence remained like a cloying poison. It clenched at every heart in the room.

Tommy felt Joel move beside him. It was several seconds before Tommy could tear his eyes away from the carnage below, but when he did, he saw the grim look that Joel wore.  Joel still stared at the gore beyond the barricades, but his eyes flickered sideways for a moment to steal a glance at Tommy. His jaw was rigid.

“So much for workin’ together.” His voice was like gravel.


End file.
